The thermal insulation and heat preservation materials are important new material associated with people's livelihood science and technology, and reflecting the national comprehensive demonstration projects, wherein the thermal insulation and heat preservation materials for exterior wall have become one of the main products of buildings energy-saving. The reflective thermal insulation coating developed in recent years can actively reflect sunlight energy and bring down the indoor temperature, thus radically cutting back on the usage of air conditioners and greatly reducing the energy consumption. The thermal insulation reflective coating is a new type of functional coating that can effectively block and reflect the radiant solar heat, and bring down temperature of the exterior wall surface and indoor, so as to ameliorate working environment and reduce energy consumption. Among the currently used reflective thermal insulation coatings, the white reflective coating with titanium dioxide as the pigment has become the most widely used thermal insulation material because its reflectance can be up to 80%. However, in practical application, the light or white coating has a shortcoming of poor stain resistance, and the heat reflectivity is decreased greatly after outdoor use for a period of time of resulted in the fouling and discoloration of the coating surface. A large number of studies have shown that inorganic powders such as titanium dioxide are used in heat-insulating reflective coatings due to their high refractive index. Hollow glass microspheres exhibit excellent thermal insulation, also because their reflectivities are directly related to the optical refractive index of the glass component. Studies and calculations have also shown that the greater the refractive index of an object, the greater the reflectivity.
Polymer hollow microsphere refers to polymer hollow microsphere that contains one or more chamber therein, the shell of which is composed of a polymer or polymers, and it is one of the typical products of particle morphology control based on polymer synthesis technology. These hollow microspheres with special characteristics have broad application prospects in nanoreactors, drug controlled release, bioimaging, catalysis, and photonic crystals. If polymer hollow microspheres having a high refractive index can be prepared, and applied to paint preparation will achieve a better thermal insulation reflection effect. However, at present there is no preparing method for high refractive index polymer hollow microspheres domestic and abroad, nor reporting about its application to insulation reflective coatings.